Arriving at the main conference hotel accompanied by his wife, Miriam González Durántez, Clegg said: "It's a really important conference for the Liberal Democrats, a crucial staging post ahead of the general election.

"And it's a conference that's going to be dominated by one, simple question – what change, what comes next?

"Everybody knows that people up and down the country are crying out for change.

"They want something different from the Labour government which is running out of road, so the choice before people is the choice between fake, phoney change from David Cameron's Conservatives and the real change the Liberal Democrats offer.

"We are in very ambitious mood, we're different to the other two old parties, we have been straight-talking all along about the challenges and the big difficulties the country faces.

"And we offer change for real, change for good, and that will be the theme of this week's party conference for the Liberal Democrats."

The five-day conference, starting today, will be the Lib Dems' last annual gathering before the next election, which must be held within the next nine months.

Clegg is seeking to position his party as the real alternative to the Tories, claiming that the Lib Dems can supplant Labour as the main "progressive" party.

But he and Lib Dem economics spokesman, Vince Cable, have gone much further than either Labour or the Conservatives in spelling out spending cuts to reduce Britain's massive debts.

In an interview with the Guardian today, he said that "savage" cuts would be required in some areas of public spending to get the country's finances back on track.

"In some cases we will be quite bold, or even savage, on current spending, precisely to be able to retain spending where you need it in areas where the economy is weak in infrastructure," he said.

Means testing of universal child benefit could form part of that plan, he indicated, telling the newspaper: "I find it odd that people on multimillion pay packages from the City get child benefit.